


Vecchio's Keys

by askye



Category: due South
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 00:27:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/askye/pseuds/askye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A snippet of Vecchio struggling under the weight of Armando.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vecchio's Keys

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thanks to arliss for her encouragement and beta reading.

Ray misses carrying keys. The weight in his pocket, the rattle to shake them loose. He stands on the high-rise floors and looks out over the desert with his hand curled in his pocket, cupping an imaginary set of keys.

Armando doesn't carry a ring of keys, there’s no need. He has a driver. The penthouse suites he uses for women and deals are opened with key cards. Nero is always at the house to open the doors and lock them, and there are security systems for everything. He has an office in Vegas but that uses a key card, which changes every week, and he carries it in his wallet.

Technically he carries keys to the front door, just in case, and a key to his desk, but those are in a key wallet, carried in his inner jacket pocket. Armando wouldn't use a key ring. It ruins the line of his pants.

Armando likes to spend time alone each night, one more of his weird quirks. Ray uses it to his advantage. Those times are when Ray can creep out from under Armando, if he didn't have this time he’d go insane. Lose himself. Today is one of those days Ray wants to find the feds and tell them the deal is off, that he’s leaving.

Ray throws a paperweight across the room in frustration. He orders hits, he fucks women, but only at the penthouses, and then he smacks them around if they don’t please him. Every day he lives as Armando he’s more and more the man Pop wanted to be and he hates it. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to leave this behind.

He hates the desert, hates the sunsets he watches every night because Armando did. Hates the lack of humidity, the lack of water. He wants to see a real lake, not these man made things, he wants to see the ocean.

Ray wants to find someone who’s good and kind and won’t look at him with eyes full of betrayal and a heart full of need. All day, every day the first months he was here he heard Benny’s voice in his head, reproachful, telling him about duty and honor. Ray tried to explain, tried to tell him that there wasn’t a choice, in the matter. Going undercover as the Bookman was never presented as a choice. The best he could do was a pathetic phone call that never told Benny anything, and he was lucky Welsh gave him that.

When Ray fucked the first woman, Benny shut up and receded back into some other place in Ray’s mind. He was grateful, and afterward when Benny was back, Ray was trying to explain again. Justify. That this was duty even though there wasn't any honor in it.

His dreams aren’t any better---filled with Ma, and Frannie. Maria and Tony, the kids. All of them looking at him, hurt and betrayed, not being taken care of, in harm’s way because Fraser can’t take care of them, because Ray isn't there. Pop came to him once, mocking but proud. Pop liked Vegas, the gambling, the goons, the violence; Ray was a helpless kid in this dream, just a kid sent down to the corner to bring his Pop back. Pop laughed at something horrible that Ray had to do that day and Ray morphed into Armando, turned it full force onto Pop, and that was the end of that.

Ray can’t banish the real devils so easily.

He looks out over the dying light and wants this to end. Tonight one more piece of himself will be carved away.

_This isn't honor Ray, this isn't duty._

God, Benny, he doesn’t need this now. He has to be Armando.

Ray turns just as the door opens; two of Armando’s men come in dragging a woman with them. This is what he has to be.

She’s a tiny redhead and hasn’t been in Vegas long, doesn’t know how to recognize Mob, or know that when they walk into a restaurant the wait staff keeps their heads down and their mouths shut. She tried to stick up for her friend, manhandled Ray in the process. Nothing happened in the restaurant, Armando doesn’t cause a scene. The woman probably thought she had gotten away with it, until the men came for her. One of them roughed her up; there’s blood on her mouth and her eye is starting to bruise. One of the guys is new, he doesn’t know all the rules yet - Armando likes them pretty. Armando likes to hurt them.

She looks scared and defiant, and Ray will have to beat that out of her and pretend to enjoy it. Before he does that though, there’s still business to take care of. He walks over and jerks her head up roughly, looking at the new guy. “You did this?”.

The goon blinks, “Yeah Boss. She put up a fight.”

Ray turns loose of her hair. “Let her go.”

Her head drops, and if she’s not more scared now she’s about to be. Vecchio doesn’t give a warning, just hits the guy -one,two- right in the mouth “Who said you could?” Goes for the ribs. “Look at her. I don’t like them messed up. Right Paulie?” Paulie nods, he was probably smart enough to tell the new guy to knock it off. “What if I wanted to fuck her?”

“You want to fuck her like that?” New guy drops to his knees and Ray kicks him a few times. At least if he has to do the next part, he can do this.

“Get him out of here,” he tells Paulie, rolling up his shirtsleeves and turning to the redhead.

_You could show leniency, be merciful. It’s not uncommon for…_

Benny’s pleading for this girl, like he does for all the others. Ray’s just relieved that she doesn’t look like Frannie or Maria, that he can leave his sisters out of this.


End file.
